<?php
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 * Copyright © 2018 Alex Yst <mailto:copyright@y.st>
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**/

$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Some people just don&apos;t listen',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/04/30.jpg" alt="The view from my apartment door" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="dreams">
	<h2>Dream journal</h2>
	<p>
		I dreamed I was up in the air with my back against the ceiling in a room with Cyrus and Vanessa down on the floor.
		Cyrus was looking through large piles of stuff looking for particular articles of clothing he hadn&apos;t seen in a while.
		I kept kicking off the walls, letting me glide across the ceiling.
		I&apos;m not sure how I got up there, but it was fun.
		After a bit, Cyrus wanted to tug on my arms, but I warned him not to do that.
		I was barely not touching the ceiling, and I had a feeling if I was pulled even a little bit further away, whatever effect was holding me up (I was guessing it was some sort of suction despite the lack of direct contact, but wasn&apos;t really sure) would be broken and I&apos;d come crashing painfully to the floor.
		I warned him that if he made me fall and get hurt, I&apos;d be angry.
		Next, he wanted to latch onto my arms and ride as I glided across.
		I was uneasy about this, as I thought his weight was enough to pull me down, but I didn&apos;t object nearly enough.
		I&apos;m not sure how he did it, but he kept pulling my arms at weird angles that hurt my elbows, so I had to keep making him stop and try again before he put any actual weight on me.
		I woke up before we could see if the effect was strong enough to keep us both airborne.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="laptop">
	<h2>Buying the laptop</h2>
	<p>
		I tried to buy the <a href="https://puri.sm/shop/librem-15/">Librem 15</a> today, but my Discover card was declined.
		So I tried my Chase card.
		Also declined.
		Next I tried my Oregon Community Credit Union credit card.
		I don&apos;t like using that one because, though the main credit union site is reasonable, the separate site used for managing credit cards issued through the credit union maliciously discriminates against $a[Tor] users.
		Declined as well.
		I tried to chat with a Discover representative after logging into the Discover website, but I got logged out again, and the site won&apos;t let me back in.
		Normally, it sends me these one-time-use codes via email.
		This time, it says it&apos;s sending the codes, but they never arrive, so I can&apos;t reach Discover support.
		Chase sent me an email alert though, claiming to have detected a fraudulent charge: the laptop.
		They made it quick and easy to mark the charge as legitimate, and after doing so, the card was no longer declined by Purism&apos;s payment processor.
		So Chase got the purchase.
	</p>
	<p>
		Something about the Purism site probably set off the fraud detection systems of all three cards, though I can only be sure of that in the case of the Chase card.
		My guess is that the purchase doesn&apos;t match my spending profile; the banks and credit union track what I buy.
		I never buy anything as expensive as that laptop; I usually buy groceries and music.
		In any case, Chase seems to be the one that makes working with their detection system easy.
		Perhaps the Chase card is the better one to use for online purchases.
	</p>
	<p>
		I later got through to Discover support, but they borked my account even worse than before.
		Now when I log in, I get a message that I have no contact information on file and I need to contact support to get them to add some.
		The representative says my contact information is in fact still on file though, and they can&apos;t do anything.
		I can&apos;t log in to pay my bill or make changes to my account, so it&apos;s no longer safe to use the card at all; if I did, I&apos;d build up unpayable debt.
		I guess that makes my Chase card my go-to card after I finish racking up debt on the stupid card that&apos;ll give me a cash bonus once I hit that threshold.
		Later, a new representative said the issue should clear up if I wait, though I don&apos;t know for how long.
		The first representative had claimed the authorisation codes sent to me were bouncing as if the email address on file was invalid, so we changed the address on file to a new one.
		Apparently, doing that locks down the account for a while, making it completely unusable.
		Sounds like something they need to fix, but I doubt they will.
		It was probably implemented as a &quot;security&quot; feature.
		I wouldn&apos;t feel so negatively about it had the other representative known that would happen and warned me.
		If they&apos;re going to implement such things, they need to train their support team to be aware of it.
		Otherwise, that would-be feature can only be classified as a bug.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		I received yet another letter from my academic advisor telling me that the school website doesn&apos;t function reliably with JavaScript disabled, and that if I don&apos;t enable it, it&apos;s my own fault if it impacts my studies.
		Clearly they&apos;re not listening to my repeated explanations that the website <strong>*doesn&apos;t*</strong> function reliably with JavaScript enabled.
		Let&apos;s try this again.
		My response:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Dear <span class="redacted">[REDACTED]</span>,
		</p>
		<p>
			When JavaScript is *enabled*, it negatively impacts my studies. I have no choice in the matter. If the tech team is too incompetent to find the bug when I&apos;ve already explained the nature of it (again, it&apos;s the unnecessary AJAX queries; remove the AJAX and the bug will be fixed), it&apos;s not my fault that the website continues to malfunction, nor is it my fault that disabling JavaScript is the *only* way for me to continue my studies here. You say that JavaScript is required for the website to work properly, but as I keep pointing out, the website *doesn&apos;t* work properly with JavaScript enabled. It *only* functions properly with it *disabled*.
		</p>
		<p>
			Kind regards,<br/>
			~ Alex Yst
		</p>
	</blockquote>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			Everything is a series of mutations.
			I didn&apos;t understand why humans are so noxious either, until last week.
			It&apos;s because when organisms in a habitat compete for the same resources, the species less able to compete either dies out or evolves not to need that resource any more.
			We humans kill off everything else because we take all we can, just like every other life form, but unlike other life forms, we don&apos;t have a more-powerful life form to keep us in check.
			Any life form would multiply like a virus if it could, unless specifically wired not to.
			Nothing in our evolution gave us the mutations needed to make us care, to make us hold back.
			So we don&apos;t.
			Those of us that do care are the oddballs.
			And now we&apos;re going to kill our planet, and with it, ourselves.
		</p>
		<p>
			Needless to say, last week sort of drained the hope out of me.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="recipe">
	<h2>Ranch dressing recipe</h2>
	<p>
		I found my scale&apos;s not sensitive enough to detect anything less than three grams of a substance.
		Until it hits that threshold, it just reads zero.
		I tried making a batch, building the following recipe:
	</p>
	<ul>
		<li>
			200 grams of vegan mayonnaise
		</li>
		<li>
			50 grams of distilled white vinegar
		</li>
		<li>
			5 grams of onion powder
		</li>
		<li>
			5 grams of garlic powder
		</li>
		<li>
			3 grams of dried dill
		</li>
		<li>
			3 grams of dried parsley
		</li>
	</ul>
	<p>
		It came out tasting way too much of vinegar.
		I&apos;ll have to try again.
		I&apos;d try adding more mayo to dilute the vinegar, but I don&apos;t have a clean jar big enough to hold such a batch at the moment.
		The dressing&apos;s pretty good on salad, but I can do and have done a lot better.
		I don&apos;t do as well when I&apos;m trying to carefully measure things.
		I&apos;m much better at simply adding what feels right without measuring anything.
		I obviously can&apos;t really record the ratio that way for others to use though.
	</p>
</section>
END
);
